Earlier this week, reports surfaced that Denmark was seeking $1 billion in back taxes from Microsoft. The case, the biggest ever pursued by the Danish tax authority, stems from Microsoft's 2002 purchase of the Danish company Navision. Microsoft promptly sold Navision to one of its subsidiaries in Ireland.

A recent report by Mandiant, a U.S. information security firm, has added an important new chapter to the discussion about cybersecurity -- and put China on the
defensive. In chronicling the massive, years-long espionage campaign conducted by the People's Liberation Army Unit 61398, the report implicates the Chinese government and military.

In recent weeks, Africa, of all places, has been a hotbed for smartphone news. Microsoft is teaming up with China's Huawei to launch an Africa-specific smartphone, the "4Afrika," and Nokia recently released what it described as an "entry-level smartphone" in South Africa. Duncan McLeod, the founder and editor of South Africa-based Tech Central, explains Africa's emergence as a viable smartphone market.

Earlier this week, the World Trade Organization ruled that the nation of Antigua will be allowed to turn a blind eye to United States intellectual property rights. Put more technically, Antigua now has the right to suspend its obligations to American copyright, trademark and patent holders. The ruling stems from a decade-old U.S. decision to prohibit remote gaming.

Back in December, European regulators warned Google that they expected concrete proposals to allay antitrust concerns by January. Well, January is almost over, and it sounds like regulators are still convinced that Google is abusing its search engine dominance. The European Commission is also investigating Google's attempts to seek and enforce injunctions against certain Apple and Microsoft products.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently wrapped up his second trip to China in less than a year. While there, he met with regulators, declared that China would become Apple's biggest market, and talked shop with the nation's No. 1 mobile carrier, China Mobile. Apple has something of an identity crisis in China.

In the battle against online piracy, industry and government officials tend to cast a wide net in blocking suspected piracy-enabling websites. Sometimes this process results in the removal of sites that have nothing to do with piracy. Last April, the UK ordered Internet service providers to block file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.

Last week, the International Telecommunications Union wrapped up a huge conference on Internet regulations and governance. The UN-sponsored event featured a few hardened factions. Debate pitted Russia, China and several Arab states -- all promoting increased regulation of the Internet -- against the U.S., Canada, Australia and much of Western Europe -- all staunchly opposed to increased regulation.

Last month, the BBC erroneously linked a prominent politician to a sexual abuse scandal. The network didn't name the politician -- but thousands of people on Twitter did. This prompted the politician, Alistair McAlpine, to vow legal action against those who tweeted or retweeted about the allegations. McAlpine has identified about 20 high-profile Tweeters.

Later this month, German legislators will take up debate on a bill extending copyright protection to snippets of news articles that appear in search engine results. Google has warned both Germany and France -- which has proposed similar legislation -- that it is not willing to play along, and will simply black out media outlets that try to levy such fees.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has been in the news on and off -- mostly on -- since his January arrest in New Zealand. He is fighting extradition to the U.S., where he is wanted on charges ranging from copyright infringement to money laundering. The German-born Dotcom has led a life filled with twists and turns, commercial successes and criminal convictions. His flamboyant ways have earned him some sympathy among his adopted countrymen.

Iceland recently drafted a new constitution, a noteworthy event for two reasons: first, because new constitutions aren't all that common and second, because citizens were invited to participate via social networking sites. While not Iceland's most pure example of crowdsourcing, the constitutional update made extensive use of public input.

The House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE climaxed last week, concluding, essentially, that the Chinese firms aren't to be trusted. That set off a spate of stories, including on-the-record denials from Huawei and reports that, for the last year, U.S. telecoms have waged a campaign against their Chinese competitors.

The recent events surrounding the raid of a Web hosting firm in Sweden have spilled over to the outside world, triggering an attack by Anonymous on several bank, university and government websites in Sweden. The events trace back to the Oct. 1 arrest of Pirate Bay cofounder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, which happened the same day police raided PRQ, a controversial Web host that is home to several torrent sites.

Because of the prevalence of English on the Internet, as well as language technology such as speech recognition and translation software, smaller languages may be falling by the wayside, according to a recent study. Languages such as Icelandic, Latvian and Lithuanian don't have enough speakers to gain traction as popular languages on the Web, and even German, Italian, Spanish and French could be at risk.

There has been a lot of news about Netflix and Canada recently, including some bizarre quotes from a Netflix executive, so journalist Peter Nowak is with us to explain and expound upon the backstory of what's turned into a pretty entertaining and pretty important story north of the border. First off, let me ask you about some interesting quotes that I just mentioned from the Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos.

Hello, and welcome to a TechNewsWorld podcast. My name is David Vranicar, I'm a reporter for TechNewsWorld, and today we're going to be talking with Jessica Dolcourt, a senior technology editor. We have enlisted Jessica today to talk about Nokia, a company that she has written about extensively and whose products she has reviewed extensively.

Today we're going to be talking with Tech In Asia Editor Charlie Custer about the ongoing spat between a pair of Chinese search engines -- the dominant incumbent, Baidu, and a newer search engine, Qihoo, which has launched recently and which has caused some waves in the Chinese search engine world.

Apple has been sizing up the world of television for a long time now with very hungry eyes. The company almost never reveals its plans out loud, of course, but if you test the PH level of the rumor pool, it's starting to look a lot like it did about six years ago, just before the first iPhone came along.

Samsung and Apple have been battling it out in courtrooms all over the world for months, if not years, with the worldwide conflict becoming kind of a dull hum in the background. This motion goes that way, that one goes this way, lawyers keep lawyering, whatever. But what's going on in California this week is supposed to be the case that's actually exciting, because it's come to the point of a real trial.

Given its lousy financial performance, periodic bouts of layoffs, questionable patent litigation strategy and security lapses, Yahoo appears to be adrift, listing, off course, capsizing. Name any unfavorable nautical condition, and it probably applies to Yahoo.

The term "SQL injection" sounds pretty scary -- kind of medical, painful, maybe even lethal. And it can be, for websites that fall victim to it. It involves tricking a site into forming a rogue SQL command that prompts a database to deliver its contents right into the hands of the attacker. If it's successful, a hacker can gain access to a ton of sensitive information.

Everyone in the tech world now suddenly wants to make their own hardware. Apple's been doing it for years, but Microsoft jumped on recently with the Surface tablet, and now Google's sort of making its own tablet too. I say "sort of" because the new Nexus 7 tablet isn't really made by Google. Like everything else in the Nexus line, it's made by a name-brand hardware builder -- in this case Asus.

Microsoft's slow crawl to the tablet market is nearly at an end. It's designed the interface of its next operating system, Windows 8, to be easy to use on tablets as well as desktops. It's created a special version, Windows 8 RT, especially for mobile ARM-based devices. It's even shoved out multiple free preview versions of the upcoming OS.

The bulk of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference basically amounts to a massive teach-in for makers of Apple software. But each year the event is kicked off with a traditional big-production Apple keynote, and ever since the company kicked MacWorld to the curb, that keynote has often served as an occasion to roll out some major new hardware upgrades.

An extremely determined and talented digital intruder can find a way to break through the security of just about any website. So when you hear about a site getting hacked, the fact that there was a break-in doesn't necessarily mean that anyone was incredibly lazy or inept or asleep at the switch. Sometimes a site just gets outplayed by a criminal genius.

Facebook's big debut on Wall Street turned out to be a milestone the company probably wants to forget as soon as it can, though that won't be possible for a pretty long time. By most accounts, Facebook's IPO was a disaster. Market glitches, bad decisions and allegations of shady dealings marred the social network's first day out

Wireless carriers have begun to realize that when you offer flat-rate, all-you-can-eat deals, it tends to bring out the pig in people. Whether it's food or beer or cellular data, customers will gorge themselves on it, and the buffet arrangement can quickly turn into a money-losing proposition if you don't plan it out just right.

It's been more than a week since Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson's resume blew up in his face, and by the looks of things, the Yahoo board isn't bothered by it. They're not bothered enough to fire the guy, anyway. Thompson's still in charge at Yahoo, and a week's worth of morale-melting embarrassment and haranguing from Dan Loeb haven't been enough to change that.

This past week has been especially kind to Samsung. Big sales numbers were followed by the unveiling of the Galaxy S III, the company's latest flagship phone and one that could very well own the market this summer. The S III runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Google's operating system and one that up to this point hasn't taken residence on a very large number of phones.